Another Book on Decision Making

Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, mentioned Gary Klein, particularly on their opposite approaches to decision making. At the end, they “agreed on their disagreement” and accepted that there are two different approaches to better decision making skills. Klein called his approach “naturalistic decision making” and that made Kahneman’s approach “analytical.”

Since I liked Kahneman’s book, I thought I will also give Klein a try and got his “Sources of Power.” If you haven’t, don’t buy the eBook. I was slightly annoyed by the treatment of graphics and tables.

There are two main “sources of power:” recognition-primed decision making” and mental simulation. Gary Klein demonstrated, persuasively, how powerful they are in making good decisions quickly and under high stress. Naturally, we would like to learn how to make decision this way. It comes naturally and therefore effortlessly too. Wouldn’t that be great?

Alas, to be good at making decision naturalistically, one must acquire expertise first and that’s no small feat. You must have experience to gain expertise, experience alone is not enough. In other books, I read about the same. Expertise comes from “deliberate practices” and one must do that for a long time (like 10 years or so) to become an expert.

The conclusion is quite depressing. I, an ordinary person, cannot learn to make excellent decisions quickly. I must invest a large part of my life first. And I would make excellent decisions only in those fields where I invested. If I merely do it for many years, that won’t make me an expert either. I would also need to really “put my heart in it.” Man, that’s really hard.

I knew many experienced yet mediocre software engineers, but I don’t know any truly good ones who are without a few grey hairs. You can draw the same conclusion from every walk of life.

I don’t feel that Kahneman and Klein are in contradiction at all. To “practice” making good decisions, one must do it with Kahneman’s lessons. Then, after several years of such practicing, one will become good at decision making naturally.